Topline:
Mount Waterman, the closest ski resort from Los Angeles, has found a new buyer after being put up for sale since early May.
Why it matters: The resort is considered a well-kept secret in L.A. Its amazing ski terrains and mom-and-pop vibes have inspired a close-knit community of skiing devotees.
What's next: The property's listing agent and longtime Waterman regular Marc Ramirez said the property will soon enter escrow, but sale could take some time to finalize.
Los Angeles has premium and accessible nature in spades: Beaches. Mountains. Deserts. Of course, powdery slopes are just a hop and a skip away in the form of the Mount Waterman ski resort.
The skiing spot sits thousands of feet atop the San Gabriel Mountains, a straight shot on Highway 2 through La Cañada Flintridge. It offers three chair lifts, some 150 acres of skiable terrains for shredders of different levels, a website that is very much stuck in time — and a history as colorful as it is idiosyncratic.
All this can be yours for a price of about $2.3 million. Waterman was put on the block earlier this month, after stretches of closures in recent years.
According to the property's listing agent, a potential "lucky buyer" has been identified out of a "couple dozens of offers" to be the new owner of the beloved spot. Soon, the property will enter escrow, which could still take some time to finalize.
"I have so many offers, if this person so much blinks, we're just going to move on to the next [offer]," said Marc Ramirez with Pacific West Business Properties, Inc.
At just 50 miles from downtown, Waterman is L.A.'s closest — and arguably the most under-the-radar — ski resort.
"I've been telling people about Waterman all my life," says Gary Mull, owner of the ski and snowboard repair shop, Gary's Sharper Edge, in Burbank. "I always say, 'Have you heard of Mount Baldy?' Everybody says yes. I go, 'Have you heard of Mount Waterman?' Everyone says no.'"
Ingrid P. Wicken, founder of the California Ski Library in Norco, says it's not an overstatement to call the resort a "best-kept secret" of L.A.
"It's still got the small mom-and-pop feel," she said.
The resort's current owner Rick Metcalf bought the place with his brother and friends in the mid-2000s, as they were Waterman diehards who didn't want to see their beloved old haunts closed down and forever lost.
"The current owners live in San Diego," said listing agent Ramirez, who himself is a Waterman diehard who was one of the first people to snowboard at the resort in the '90s. "They bought it to save it more than anything."
That sense of devotion is palpable in skiers who for generations have flocked to its slopes.
Mull, a lifelong Angeleno and Waterman skier, started skiing when he was a toddler. At 15, he skied at the resort for the very first time.
"We left so early, we thought it was going to be a little further away. We actually drove right past it in the dark," Mull said.
Since that day, he was hooked.
"Waterman is the kind of place where you can forget your wallet, forget your skis, forget your jacket and your lunch and somebody would take care of you," he said.
Like so many before him, Mull took his son to Waterman. He said he once asked the then 10-year-old what was his favorite place to ski?
His son laughed and told him, "Dad, we're famous here. Everybody knows us."
Beyond the close-knit community, the resort's selling point remains the snow — particularly for skiers and snowboarders looking for a challenge.
Mauricio Tassara grew up in Eagle Rock and frequented Waterman with his dad and siblings when he was young. As a teenager, he would hit the slopes several times a week.
"When there was good snow — it was always natural snow — there was an extremely good amount of out of bounds and off run tree skiing," Tassara said.
He remembered going up the lifts, then hiking out of bounds to snowboard down the mountain thick with untouched snow all the way to Angeles Crest Highway. Then he and his siblings and friends would hitchhike back to the lifts.
"And we did that all day long," Tassara said. "We would get fresh tracks every run."
Waterman had another draw, Tassara said — the "small mountain family-owned kind of feel" that remained for decades after the founding Newcomb family started the first rope tow in 1939. Two years later, they opened the first chairlift to the public.
By the time current old-timers like Tassara and Mull were skiing Waterman, the resort was run by Lynn Newcomb Jr. Those many decades where Newcomb Jr. was at Waterman's helm are considered its golden era — where the resort was always open, and the snow was plentiful and good.
Newcomb passed away in 2011 and is still spoken about by the many who have met him with warm reverence.
Saul Traiger worked as a ski patroller at Waterman for more than a decade starting in the mid-1990s.
"When we were going up the lift at like 8 o'clock in the morning, we could see Lynn coming down. He had already been up there checking the snow conditions, making sure the runs were properly groomed," Traiger said. "I'd like to say for Lynn Newcomb Mount Waterman wasn't a business. It was an art form."
But the very thing that has made Waterman possible is what has doomed its recent past. The resort doesn't use snowmaking, relying on nature alone for the powder that has kept its doors open.
"Their motto is snow from heaven, not from hoses," Mull said. "That's how it's been all through our history. It's either we pray for snow, because we don't have enough snow to open, and then once we get the weather, we pray that we have a road."
Case in point, the road to the resort was closed for weeks after the intense series of storm early this year. This winter season, the resort was open for just 12 days, according to real estate broker Ramirez.
That unpredictability might be one reason why Waterman has never gained the kind of mainstream traction as its counterparts.
"The snow is hit or miss. So if Waterman doesn't have snow, then [skiers] go to Mountain High or Snow Summit or Snow Valley," said Wicken with the California Ski Library.
How the pending sale might impact the resort's operations remains to be seen. In the meantime, there are the memories — lots and lots of fond memories.
"It's just a very cherished memory for me as a kid growing up in Southern California where I could go skiing in the morning and go surfing in the afternoon," said Tassara.
Topline:
Proponents say Prop. 2 would allow the state to shore up its reserves for an economic downturn. Critics say it would only allow state leaders to spend more in the future.
AI revenue: Because California’s tax revenue depends so much on wealthy residents’ stock earnings, the state budget is often caught in a boom-or-bust cycle at the mercy of the market. In recent years, the state has seen robust tax revenue from an AI-fueled economy, which has helped state leaders avoid or delay painful cuts to social services even when they projected significant deficits. But economists have consistently warned the boom may not last, and the federal budget cuts to healthcare and welfare programs this year deepened that uncertainty.
How long have we had a rainy day fund? Before 2014, California leaders and voters established reserve funds several times to weather financial storms, but ended up quickly withdrawing most of those funds, leaving the state with very little savings on hand, according to the legislative analyst.
Read on... for more on Prop. 2.
The question Proposition 2 poses to California voters is simple: Should the state be able to save more money when its economy is booming?
The ballot measure, dubbed the Save for California’s Future Act, seeks to shore up California’s rainy day fund by allowing state lawmakers to sock away up to 20% of the state’s general fund tax revenue — double the current ceiling of 10%.
It would also require the state to save a bigger share of the gains when revenue is growing faster.
Proponents, including Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic lawmakers, say the state needs a bigger savings account to weather its volatile economy.
Because California’s tax revenue depends so much on wealthy residents’ stock earnings, the state budget is often caught in a boom-or-bust cycle at the mercy of the market. In recent years, the state has seen robust tax revenue from an AI-fueled economy, which has helped state leaders avoid or delay painful cuts to social services even when they projected significant deficits. But economists have consistently warned the boom may not last, and the federal budget cuts to healthcare and welfare programs this year deepened that uncertainty.
Supporters pitched Prop. 2 as a common sense solution, noting the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, which advises state lawmakers, has long recommended the state set aside funding for downturns. The measure is endorsed by a bipartisan coalition of groups, including labor unions, hospital associations and chambers of commerce.
“It doubles the size of the state’s rainy day fund and requires California to save more during strong budget years, so we’re not caught flat-footed when the next downturn hits,” wrote Assembly Budget Chair Jesse Gabriel, an Encino Democrat, and Assembly Appropriations Vice Chair Josh Hoover, a Folsom Republican and the only GOP lawmaker to vote for the measure.
Most Republican lawmakers opposed Prop. 2, stating that the state should use its excess revenue to give taxpayers refunds instead of saving it. They argue that state government already spends too much and that a bigger reserve would merely give state leaders more to spend.
“When they say we're here for fiscal responsibility, it's like the devil offering a Bible study. Don't buy it,” said Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, a San Diego Republican.
Before 2014, California leaders and voters established reserve funds several times to weather financial storms, but ended up quickly withdrawing most of those funds, leaving the state with very little savings on hand, according to the legislative analyst.
In 2004, following the dot-com bust, voters overwhelmingly supported Prop. 58, a bipartisan ballot measure that required the state to establish a budget stabilization account and make annual deposits into the fund.
But lawmakers swiftly depleted the fund during the early months of the Great Recession and were forced to make steep spending cuts, borrow money at expensive rates and use accounting gimmicks to weather the rest of the crisis. Under then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, the state Legislature slashed health and welfare funding, scrapped tax credits, furloughed state employees and delayed payments to schools and local governments.
In 2014, as the state’s economy rebounded, then-Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, urged that the state save more. He and the Legislature championed Prop. 2, a bipartisan ballot measure that required the state to save more aggressively and limited when lawmakers could withdraw from the reserves. Nearly 70% of voters approved it.
“When the pendulum swings again, we won’t be forced to raise taxes or make the kinds of harsh cuts that were all too common in recent years,” Brown said in a 2014 op-ed stumping for the reform.
The law requires the state to set aside 1.5% of its general fund revenue and any spikes in capital gains tax revenue each year, with half deposited into the reserves and the other half to pay down state debts. It also made it harder for the state to spend the reserves and carved out portions of the savings for schools.
Under the law, state lawmakers can withdraw from the reserves only when the governor declares a budget emergency and decides that the state is not expected to collect enough revenue in the upcoming fiscal year to match the spending in the three previous budget years.
A majority of state lawmakers must vote to ratify the budget emergency. If approved, they are allowed to withdraw up to half of the rainy day fund balance at once, unless they already withdrew half the balance in the previous budget year and still need to take out more. There are no limits on what lawmakers can use the funds for.
Prop. 2 would maintain those withdrawal rules, which critics say would give future governors broad authority to spend down the reserves instead of reining in spending.
“The rainy day fund can be invaded even when it’s not raining, simply because spending isn’t as high as it was within the prior three years,” wrote David Crane, a former economic adviser to Schwarzenegger and founder of Govern for California, a nonprofit fundraising powerhouse that aims to “counter special interest influence.”
“Unless the withdrawal rules change, a larger reserve just lets governors bake in spending based on optimistic forecasts, knowing they can always dip into reserves if revenue falls short.”
In an interview with CalMatters, Gabriel stressed that voters approved those rules in 2014 and emphasized that the measure has bipartisan support. He also dismissed the criticism that the state should just spend less during downturns, likening it to telling families to eat less or downsize instead of dipping into their savings when they fall on hard times.
“I think (the concern) is very misplaced,” he said. “(Prop. 2) is recommended by the experts, because it matches the common-sense wisdom of California families.”
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
Topline:
Inglewood city leaders broke ground on a new shuttle bus network, planting ceremonial brass shovels in the dirt outside a Market Street shopping center on Wednesday morning. They took turns at a microphone praising the $287.5 million Inglewood Transit Connector, which will ferry visitors between the Downtown Inglewood Metro K Line Station and the city’s stadium district. Officials hope the project will jump-start the struggling Market Street shopping corridor.
Why now: Inglewood has transformed into a global entertainment magnet over the last decade, pulling in Super Bowls, World Cup matches and megastar musicians. Locals, though, have protested the costs of the rapid development — traffic jams, rising living costs, old haunts demolished — and asked for more ways to tap into the economic benefits. City officials say the shuttle bus network will help with some of those issues by alleviating traffic jams and driving visitors to spend their dollars at local businesses. Not everyone is convinced.
What's next: Actual construction is set to start in the first week of November, planners say, and the first buses are scheduled to roll out down dedicated lanes just ahead of the 2028 Olympics.
Inglewood city leaders broke ground on a new shuttle bus network, planting ceremonial brass shovels in the dirt outside a Market Street shopping center on Wednesday morning.
They took turns at a microphone praising the $287.5 million Inglewood Transit Connector, which will ferry visitors between the Downtown Inglewood Metro K Line Station and the city’s stadium district. Officials hope the project will jump-start the struggling Market Street shopping corridor.
“We always said that we were going to make Inglewood the city to drive to and not through, and we’re doing that today,” Councilmember Alex Padilla said.
Inglewood has transformed into a global entertainment magnet over the last decade, pulling in Super Bowls, World Cup matches and megastar musicians. Locals, though, have protested the costs of the rapid development — traffic jams, rising living costs, old haunts demolished — and asked for more ways to tap into the economic benefits.
City officials say the shuttle bus network will help with some of those issues by alleviating traffic jams and driving visitors to spend their dollars at local businesses. Not everyone is convinced.
Just a few hundred yards from the ceremony, Amelia Hernandez and her team were packing boxes at Selwyn Jewelers, one of the two dozen businesses at the corner of Market Street and Florence Avenue the city took over through eminent domain earlier this year. The city plans to demolish the shopping center to make way for a 1,000-space parking garage, a bus plaza and a pedestrian bridge crossing Florence to the Downtown Inglewood K Line station.
The jeweler said she’s skeptical the new shuttle system will actually mean more business for local shops, especially those like hers that are more targeted to residents than visitors.
“Everybody comes, parks and leaves,” she said. “What do they expect? [Stadium visitors] are going to the notary public? They’re going to a hair salon?”
Wednesday’s ceremony capped nearly a decade of planning for the Inglewood Transit Connector. City officials first pitched it as a $2 billion automated rail line, but pared down their plans to a shuttle bus system after federal funding hit a wall.
Actual construction is set to start in the first week of November, planners say, and the first buses are scheduled to roll out down dedicated lanes just ahead of the 2028 Olympics. City officials say they hope to bring back automated rail line plans in the future.
Mayor James Butts said the shuttles are only planned to run on event days — Inglewood’s three major venues have hundreds of events between them — and that the city hasn’t yet picked a vendor to run the actual shuttles. The mayor said the city expects to move 10,000 people through the hub on event days.
Eli Lipmen, executive director of the nonprofit Move LA, is one of the transportation activists pushing for the region to tighten up its transportation network ahead of the Olympics. He said that while the city still has a lot of work to do, he is excited to see the shuttle system roll out to provide an alternative to vehicle traffic.
“This station, this area, has needed a transit hub for a very long time,” he said.
A few shops were still open in the shopping center on Wednesday, but most of the windows were dark or papered over.
Project planners said the city has found new spots for half of the two dozen businesses displaced from the bulldozed shopping center and that it is also working with the hair stylists that rent chairs at salons in the center.
Businesses like Red’s Flavor Table and Randy’s Donuts & Chinese Food will be relocating to new digs on Market Street, according to project planners. CVS Pharmacy opened a new store across the street. Selwyn Jewelers is moving to a space a few blocks away.
Hernandez, the owner of Selwyn Jewelers, said the relocation process has been horrific and was poorly planned.
“I’m just left with a whole bunch of ill feelings,” she said.
Other business owners praised the city’s work in a series of short videos.
“Although we are sad to be leaving our current location, we’re happy to continue to stay in Inglewood,” said Sylvia Hollins, manager of Red’s Flavor Table. “We’re going to be on Market Street at a bigger and better location.”
The post Inglewood breaks ground on a new $287.5M stadium shuttle network appeared first on LA Local.
Topline:
A federal judge in California is putting limits on pre-election field operations conducted by the Department of Homeland Security that the agency says is aimed at trying to find noncitizens who have illegally voted in nine states.
Why it matters: In recent weeks, armed Homeland Security Investigations officers have carried out field operations and visited homes to interview people suspected of illegally voting as noncitizens. The targets can include people who became citizens but voted before they naturalized. In a 19-page order late Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, an appointee of President Joe Biden, wrote that the federal government was using "flawed" data in the initiative and that its efforts likely violated the Voting Rights Act, which bars voter intimidation.
Why now: HSI field operations were planned in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin, according to documents produced in the case and CNN reporting. In a declaration, USCIS official Nicolas Bartell had told the judge his team manually reviews records before referring them to HSI, but acknowledged the "low possibility" citizens could be "erroneously identified as potential aliens" in federal records. He wrote the risks were mitigated by safeguards his office takes "and any remaining risks were outweighed by the need to support the agency's law-enforcement and election-integrity mission."
A federal judge in California is putting limits on pre-election field operations conducted by the Department of Homeland Security that the agency says is aimed at trying to find noncitizens who have illegally voted in nine states.
In recent weeks, armed Homeland Security Investigations officers have carried out field operations and visited homes to interview people suspected of illegally voting as noncitizens. The targets can include people who became citizens but voted before they naturalized.
In a 19-page order late Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, an appointee of President Joe Biden, wrote that the federal government was using "flawed" data in the initiative and that its efforts likely violated the Voting Rights Act, which bars voter intimidation.
Martínez-Olguín referenced a disclosure last month from a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services whistleblower that alleged rushed efforts to match data to create a target list of potential noncitizens on voter rolls, and that the list includes U.S. citizens. She also pointed to HSI's social media posts, including one that showed agents handcuffing a California man accused of unlawfully registering to vote.
The judge wrote that the government's use of unreliable and incomplete data along with highly publicized arrests "lead to an objectively reasonable fear of law enforcement entanglements that intimidates citizens from urging or aiding others in exercising their right to vote."
HSI field operations were planned in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin, according to documents produced in the case and CNN reporting.
Martínez-Olguín barred DHS officers in those states from conducting field operations targeting people they "know, suspect, or should reasonably know or suspect are U.S. citizens," or that are based "wholly" on USCIS matching data without further investigation.
In a declaration, USCIS official Nicolas Bartell had told the judge his team manually reviews records before referring them to HSI, but acknowledged the "low possibility" citizens could be "erroneously identified as potential aliens" in federal records. He wrote the risks were mitigated by safeguards his office takes "and any remaining risks were outweighed by the need to support the agency's law-enforcement and election-integrity mission."
It's unclear how much of an effect the judge's order will have on the federal government's highly publicized campaign to find noncitizen voters.
States reviews and audits have consistently found voting by noncitizens to be extremely rare.
"DHS is laser focused on identifying, prosecuting, and removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of U.S. citizens. ONLY Americans should elect American leaders," the agency wrote in a statement. "We have no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens."
The order is set to take effect on Friday and would be in effect through election night, though the federal government could appeal.
The judge's ruling came in a lawsuit filed last month by a coalition that includes San Francisco and Santa Clara counties, the city of San Francisco, nursing unions and Voto Latino Foundation. Protect Democracy and the National Immigration Law Center are litigating the case against the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.
"Today, the courts affirmed a vital principle of our democracy: Voting is a fundamental right that citizens — whether born here or naturalized — should be able to exercise without armed government agents harassing them," Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer with Protect Democracy, said in a statement.
"It was clear from the start that DHS built its lists on bad data, never checked how often it was wrong, and recklessly sent agents to people's homes weeks before an election," he added.
A court filing by the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United described naturalized citizen members who no longer wanted to attend political rallies, sign up to be election poll workers, or vote in person because of the federal operations.
The order comes as the Department of Justice is suing California and demanding the state segregate 20,000 ballots from people federal officials say they believe are "likely" noncitizens.
A preliminary review of a sample of that list by Los Angeles County election officials found many of the registrations were canceled, inactive or had no voting history, and some pertained to people who indicated they were born in the U.S.
The DOJ announced charges against 28 green card holders across the state on Monday who are accused of illegally voting or registering to vote.
Copyright 2026 NPR
Topline:
Healthcare costs are rising fast in the U.S., and even workers with solid healthcare benefits through work are feeling it, according to an annual survey of nearly 2,000 employers about their health benefits. The report was published Thursday by KFF, a nonpartisan health research organization.
Why it matters: "The average health insurance premium for a family of four is now $28,000, which is just a ton of money," says Matthew Rae, associate director for the Health Care Marketplace Program at KFF. "It's basically the cost of a new car every year just to keep a family of four insured." Of that total for family premiums, workers pay about $7,000 per year on average and employers pay the rest.
Why now: Another report published Thursday demonstrates the way these high costs affect people's health. The survey, conducted every two years by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation that supports independent research, is entitled "The State of Health Insurance Coverage in 2026." Even for workers fortunate enough to have health benefits, "about 43% of them said that they didn't get healthcare because of cost over the past year, and about 31% reported that they had medical debt," says Sara Collins, lead author of the report.
Joseph Babbitt of Springfield, Mo. has a pretty good deal when it comes to health insurance. He works as a senior financial controller for West Plains Veterinary Supply, which employs about 50 people and distributes pet food, toys and vet supplies across the region.
Like about 157 million Americans, Babbitt gets insurance through his job. Unlike most Americans, his job has exceptionally generous benefits. "Our owners are very nice — they give all of our employees healthcare and they pay for it," he says. The company offers several different plan options and covers most or all of the monthly premium cost.
For stories on the science of healthy living, subscribe to NPR's Health newsletter.
So why, even with free premiums, does it still feel like health costs are way too expensive? "Everybody talks about healthcare and how much it's costing them," says Babbitt. He explains that even without monthly premiums, a high deductible can be brutal — that's the amount the patient has to spend out-of-pocket before the insurance company starts paying for doctors visits and procedures, etc.
Now age 60, he remembers a time when it wasn't so bad. "Back in the '90s, our deductibles were $250 [or] $500 — now they're $5,000," he says. "That seems like a lot."
"We are the only country on our planet that forces people into bankruptcy because they get sick," he adds.
Healthcare costs are rising fast in the U.S., and even workers with solid healthcare benefits through work are feeling it, according to an annual survey of nearly 2,000 employers about their health benefits. The report was published Thursday by KFF, a nonpartisan health research organization.
"The average health insurance premium for a family of four is now $28,000, which is just a ton of money," says Matthew Rae, associate director for the Health Care Marketplace Program at KFF. "It's basically the cost of a new car every year just to keep a family of four insured." Of that total for family premiums, workers pay about $7,000 per year on average and employers pay the rest.
A glimmer of positivity is that the costs for plans isn't growing as fast as it has in years past, he explains. "We're seeing a 5% increase in family health insurance premiums, which continues a period of modest growth," he says. That increase is roughly on par with worker wages and inflation.
However, "a 5% increase on a big number is still a lot of money," Rae points out. Plus, the growth for the portion of the premium costs that workers pay was 9%. "If this is the beginning of a shift of costs onto workers, that would be a big deal in terms of affordability," he says.
"We are asking people to chip in a lot of money," Rae adds. "Many people are committing a big chunk of their income to health insurance."
Another report published Thursday demonstrates the way these high costs affect people's health. The survey, conducted every two years by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation that supports independent research, is entitled "The State of Health Insurance Coverage in 2026."
Even for workers fortunate enough to have health benefits, "about 43% of them said that they didn't get healthcare because of cost over the past year, and about 31% reported that they had medical debt," says Sara Collins, lead author of the report.
Another key finding was that the overall uninsured rate rose in the last two years. Collins says that's significant but not surprising, because of federal policy decisions like letting extra federal subsidies for people enrolled in Affordable Care Act plans expire, and people losing Medicaid after the pandemic emergency ended.
Federal data shows millions of people have lost health coverage already from either Medicaid or the ACA marketplaces. When work requirements take effect next year, millions more people are projected to lose Medicaid.
"There is a, I think, a strong feeling across the country that something probably does need to be done to the situation that people are facing in their health and health insurance — both on the cost side and then also on these coverage losses," Collins says.
"We asked people whether the federal government has a responsibility to ensure that all Americans have coverage and nearly three quarters said yes to that — that included about 45% of Republicans, 93% of Democrats and 76% of independents."
Copyright 2026 NPR
